A notorious hacker who was responsible for a major hack that resulted in the theft of over 80,000 ETH from Wormhole in 2022 almost received an undisclosed amount of airdropped W tokens. This information was revealed by a blockchain researcher known as Pland.
Pland took to social media to share the news, jokingly stating, “Wormhole forgot to exclude the exploiter from the airdrop.” Degen News confirmed the finding, pointing out that four Solana wallets connected to the hacker were eligible to claim $52,700 worth of W tokens.
Austin Federa, the head of strategy at Solana Foundation, found humor in the situation, commenting, “This is actually an incredible commitment to protocol neutrality.”
Following community backlash, the Wormhole team took action and removed the hacker’s addresses from the eligibility list for the airdrop. This decision was later confirmed by Airdrop Checker.
Wormhole recently launched its native W token to much excitement in the crypto community. However, the event attracted attention from malicious actors spreading phishing links. Some accounts were found to be posting phishing scams related to the airdrop, leading to warnings from web3 security firms.
Despite the initial hype surrounding W’s release, the token’s value dropped by more than 25% in the first 24 hours of trading. CoinMarketCap data showed a spike in value followed by a significant decrease, with W trading on major exchanges like Binance and OKX.
Overall, the incident with the hacker almost profiting from the airdrop mishap has sparked discussion within the crypto community, highlighting the need for vigilance when participating in such events.
